1. Field of the Invention
The present inventive concept herein relates to an image processing apparatus, and more particularly, to a motion estimation apparatus for motion estimation and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image processing apparatus (or an image encoding apparatus) performs motion estimation to improve compression efficiency. An image processing apparatus may include a motion estimator. The motion estimation is a motion finding to determine a position similar to a present image to be compressed from a previous image. The motion estimator may load an image to be used in the motion estimation from an external memory through a bus.
However, the bus may be shared by not only the motion estimator but also various modules in the image processing apparatus. As a demand for a high resolution image increases, a size of image for motion estimation increases and as complexity of the image processing apparatus increases, the use of bus by other modules increases.
However, a motion estimator for motion estimation loads image data having a predetermined size from a memory. If a size of image data loaded into a motion estimator from a memory increases, performance of image estimation may be improved. To achieve this, if the motion estimator increases a size of data loaded from a memory, an occupied bandwidth of motion estimator increases. At this time, the increased occupied bandwidth of the motion estimator may affect operations of other modules connected to the bus. Thus, the motion estimator uses a bandwidth having a predetermined size considering operations of other modules. However, a bandwidth that can be used in the bus may vary depending on operations of modules sharing the bus.
However, since the motion estimation device loads only image data having a predetermined size, there may be a problem that a bandwidth not used in the bus is not sufficiently used to improve performance of motion estimation.